Morning journal and courier., 1887-06-10

The Study or the Nude-Portraits-l
 Jamin and Doueet-Art Not Flour
 1shfns-An American Painters Pfc-
 ture.
 PARIS, May 25.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Every subscriber to the JOURNAL AND COURIER takes at least one New York paper, and undoubtedly has opportunities of read ing as many more as he chooses. He there fore has had before him as much writing about the Salon as he cares for, and l am spared writing anything of necessity on the subject. This years Salon is the poorest one can remember, and I have seen at least
 half a dozen and remember them all dis tinctly. There are fewer good things, more ordinary things, and there are some things so atrocious that you expect to see N. A. af-
 ter their authors names. Still what can be
 expected when the country is under such a
 cloud? Bismarck's fingers are about the
 throat of unhappy France and any moment
 he may clutch to death. Art suffers more
 than any other industry, for art is not a ne-
 cessity. Artists are not selling anything at
 home, and the ridiculous tax imposed by our
 Washington infallibles virtually shuts them
 out from their best foreign market. I tell
 them that they had better establish colony
 in New York city, where they can go over in
 detachments, paint pictures and then come
 back. But to the Salon. I can recall but
 one work of art that impressed me as truly
 artistic creation; and that is little statue
 by Falguiere, which he calls Diana. She is
 round, deliciously plump and vibrating from
 head to foot with delicate loveliness. For
 many year have not seen such wonderful
 artistic treatment of marble; such perfect
 modelling; such an infusion of poetic life And yet she is very real and not one bit
 classic. She is a bewitching French girl
 playing for fun the part of Diana. That
 one thing in my opinion manifests more ar tistic power than all the rest of the Salon
 put together.
 Many of the pictures are very poor, espec-
 ially the nudes And as French artists
 pride themselves on their nudes, their fail ures are especially noticeable. I am thor ough believer in the study of the nude. There is nothing as interesting in nature as the human body. It is the one object in na ture of which one never tires, for it is end less in variety. It and it alone the art stu dent can and will study with concentration of untiring interest. The study of the nude is therefore the one thing to beget accuracy, and without accuracy artistic ability is without foundation. Artistic cleverness may attract for while, balloon fashion, but the attraction will not last unless there be solid attachment to truth. The great defect of the present crop of French nudities is that they show nudity as an end and not as a means. There are some fifty or sixty nudities in the Salon. By nudity I mean an entire nudity, where there is no clothing whatsoever. Of all these nudities 1 can only recall one where it does not seem to have been the artists intention to represent nakedness and nothing else. There is an intensifying of
 nudity and an exaggeration of vulgar detail such as I have never seen before; and all the shop windows are filled with photo
 graphs of these things. It is & wonder that such pictures are allowed to be exhibited. It is an equal wonder that such books as are written and published to-day in Paris
 are publicly exposed for sale. There can't be Comstock in this town.
 There are a great many most excellent portraits in the Salon. The great artists, that is the artists who keep up the reputa- tion of French art, either do not appear or appear in portraits. Gerome has nothing.
 Cabanel has 8 pretentious and repulsive picture representing Cleopatra experiment. ing with prisms on her slaves and one portrait. The portrait is by long odds the better of the two. Bongaeeeau has two little loves flying in mid -air-one of the best things in the Salon-and portrait of poor little washed out French girl. Bou- Ianger has two portraits. Bonnat has one portrait and so it goes. In times like these artists cannot paint large pictures unless they are ordered. If it were not for the many orders given out by the State l don't know what would become of the poor fel- lows. A star in the catalogue by the name of picture means that the picture is the property of the artist, or in other words that it is for sale. It is sad to see the great number of stars in the present cata- logue. Three quarters of the sculpture IS in plaster; the artists hoping for orders from the State which will enable them to put their works into marble. Years ago when I attended Julian's academy in the Passage des Panorama the two cleverest
 students were Jamin and Doucet. Doucet was the most orderly and persistent work | CT, and there was charming grace and delicacy in his drawings. Jamin was big chap with warm heart and a ruddy, | healthy body, and he painted exactly as he | looked. He had too much fun in him to be very orderly, and he was too full of ex- | uberant life to be persistent. Jamin has picture in the Salon that is so like him | that no one else could have painted it. He calls it drama of the stone age. In a | cave is preadamite woman in the clutch es of lion who has killed and is about devouring her. On the left approaches the preadamite husband. He is taken at the very instant he sees what has happened. His l stone hammer falls from one hand, @ stag he has slain from the other He throws his head back and the expression of utter horror which fills his face is so intense and 50 ire | sistably comic that you burst out laughing. | That's Jamin all over again. was enjoying | it the other day when heard a melancholy l voice at my elbow: s'Are you from the Chicago, but don't see anything to laugh at | in that picture. Do you, dear?' 'No, | love-" and walked away from the gloomy pair. Doucet has risen still higher. He was Prix-de-Rome and is already H. c. I am | sorry to say that be has one of the most re- ,Jcfx, ir,& rha1a oil l wonderfully faithful representation of a vsry
 ugly model. For skill in execution there is l nothing in the Salon superior to it. Of course your readers have heard of Gervex, whose picture attracts more attention than any other. He certainly stands at the head of the materialists. The scene is so real that you feel yourself in the hospital and by the bedside of the patient.
 I could write interminably, but what is the
 use! It has all been done to death already. Every Paris paper and every London paper has had article after article about the Salon.
 The London papers summing it down, the
 French papers knocking it up. The truth is that there is very little artistic spirit in Eu-
 rope to-day. ATS cedat armis The realities of life are terrible and absorbing. The best of human energies are employed in the de- vising Of new instruments of destruction and in planning methods to make them efica- cious. Art needs life and hope to flourish
 and be joyous.
 One more picture must speak of or will be accused of disloyalty. It is the only pie ture by an American which 1 have noticed. There may be others more worthy of notice, but in the about twenty hours I have passed
 at the Salon I have not happened to them. To find any particular work of art is almost impossible, for neither name nor num- Der gives an indication of location. Works are placed exactly as the juries choose to place them. Works by the same artist may | be at the separate ends of the building. The | picture to which refer is called f'The Culti- vation of Tulips" and is painted by MT. George Hitchcock, of Providence, whose
 residence is given as Egmond-von-Zee, Hol-
 land. It is quser picture, but admirably painted. In the foreground are about ten rows of red tulips stretching straight from